Google Pay's feature set has long lagged behind Apple's Wallet in terms of support for virtual tickets and boarding passes, but that finally appears to be changing (as we recently spotted in teardowns). Today, Google announced on its blog that the Pay app will be getting support for virtual boarding passes, event tickets, and peer to peer money transfers. Boarding passes and tickets have been in soft launch for some time, but that last bit was previously - and quite strangely - relegated to an entirely different app called Google Pay Send, likely a result of it having previously been the Google Wallet app.

PayPal's partnership with Google is "deepening" (as the company puts it) to allow making PayPal payments simpler across Google's multiple products. Soon, adding PayPal as a payment method to one Google service — Google Pay, the Play Store, YouTube, et cetera — will make it available on all of Google's services, including, for the first time, Google Pay Send.

It wasn't that long ago that Google Pay (and its previous names) was solely focused on making purchases in a store or paying on the spot to get onto subways...and sometimes sending money to friends. Google recently added support for one-time transit tickets on the Las Vegas Monorail and prepaid commuter cards with the TriMet in Portland, Oregon, but things are about to get a lot more interesting thanks to the latest update. We can expect to see support added for airport boarding passes and event tickets. There are several other big additions coming, too, so let's get straight into it.

The Android Pay name has been dead for weeks, replaced by Google Pay for the foreseeable future. With the rebranding out of the way and the adjustment period starting to fade, it's time to get back to business as usual. The latest update looks a bit like a bug fixer since there don't appear to be any immediately visible changes after installing. However, a teardown gives a view of a new feature coming for prepaid accounts that will ensure they never run low on funds. Also, work continues on the effort to merge in Google Pay Send, formerly Google Wallet.

The first update to the Google Pay app since the rebranding has been making its way out into the world. The new version doesn't appear to bring any visible changes beyond a few pixel-level adjustments, but it includes a couple of neat topics for a teardown. We'll briefly discuss the imminent merger of Google Pay Send, then dive into the subject of supporting transit tickets, where they might be supported first, and some of the other quirky details to look forward to.

If you were around for yesterday's activities, you've already seen that Android Pay has been switched over to the new Google Pay branding, along with some upgrades to both the look and function. As part of the announcement, we were told that the Google Wallet app would be undergoing a short term rebranding of its own, taking on the name Google Pay Send. That version is now here, and unsurprisingly, it has been given some minor visual touch-ups. But not only that, it actually also got the reminders feature that was recently spotted in a teardown.